


Pain

by FlorarenaKitasatina



Category: Epic Battle Fantasy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Drama, Gen, Grimdark, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2018-11-06 06:18:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11030379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FlorarenaKitasatina/pseuds/FlorarenaKitasatina
Summary: One would think that death can stop some folks. Maybe. But for one young woman who languished in nothingbutpain and torment for who knows how long, she'll find that all is not as it seems...





	1. Intro- As The World Turns Black

Pain. A feeling that is present, and one that has been since time started flowing. One that never truly goes away, and one that never stays away for long. Indeed, as with all feelings—and, likewise, all emotions—it is a part of nature, just another intricate facet that comes and goes as day turns to night. No matter how big or small, it is always there.

Ever-present, and ever-fleeting, such a thing is. And it can come from the most unlikely of sources. For the most absurd of reasons, in the most unexpected of ways. Sometimes, no reason is involved at all. Whatever the case may be, pain can help a person grow and learn to avoid more of the unpleasant feeling… or it can push one to do questionable things someone with their sanity still intact would raise an eyebrow at, in the best case scenario.

Too much of it can drive one over the brink, until they are simply so far gone that the best thing to do is put them out of their misery. In very rare cases, even that alone might not be enough to quell pain—and any and all other feelings and emotions that can stem from it as a result. Yet some wish it on others, yet some _want_ to deal in pain—regardless of whether or not they're the recipient thereof.

One such recipient that was a young woman shuddered as a door slammed behind her, scraping against stone until the very moment it met with its frame in a loud thud that rivaled that of thunder. Darkness covered the space, forcing her eyes to adjust. She leaned back into the door and slid down until her rear connected with a hard surface as cold as freshly-fallen snow, and her head drooped like a dead weight.

Seconds ticked by uncounted, then they turned to minutes, all spent in ebony silence. The lone woman in the inky darkness cared not to count how many. Such an attempt was pointless without a means to accurately keep track of time.

Yet the silence didn't last for longer than an hour at best. Her body seized up, with pain flaring throughout every nerve in her body as she heard a set of footsteps echoing in from outside the door. Dread gripped her in the same moment that the sound halted as fast as it had come, and her eyes widened as the door shifted slightly behind her.

She turned around and backpedaled a little as it fully opened, still sitting on the floor, and froze when the door slammed into the wall. She wasted no time looking up as a fully cloaked figure glared down at her, the garment it wore cast about in a faint orange glow that betrayed its purple color.

She could not see their face, but they could see hers; pale and with a mop of green hair sitting on her head. The figure knelt, and leaned forward as their hooded head came at her eye level. The blackness that shadowed whatever lay beneath it may as well have been their face; nothing more than an empty abyss that seemingly stared back. It turned to her abdomen, very swollen and barely covered in a tattered white cloth that dared call itself a tunic.

Then the figure turned back to her and stared into green eyes that shimmered, even in the dismal area. Silence held the two for no more than seconds. "Soon, Anna," the cloaked figure began in a hollow, masculine voice that was such a deep baritone it was almost demonic. "Soon it will be all over."

Anna was frozen in place. She wanted to move, yet the empty gaze of the abyss staring at her kept her fixed to the spot. Her mouth opened, but words would not come out. For a moment her breath hitched and then stopped.

Was the figure smiling under his hood? She wasn't sure. But the figure nonetheless noted her look, "There's no point in trying anymore. You've lost almost everything you held dear nearly nine months ago; the only thing you have now is your unborn child. All that awaits you now is the dark abyss." He lifted a hand up, causing the sleeve covering it to drop and reveal blemished skin with a frame that formed wicked talons. 

"After that, it's sweet, sweet death that will whisk you away," he promised darkly, leaning forward some more to cup her left cheek with his hand. He brushed a thumb against her face, and chuckled as the nail at the end cut a gash into her flesh that started bleeding right away. "Time's fast running out for you." 

He pulled back and stood up, once more looking down on her as if she were nothing more than a meager ant. The figure turned away and walked down a lengthy stone hall lit with dying torches, without bothering to close the door behind him.

What meager torchlight there was enabled Anna to see that the hall was barren; just the doorframe she was still sitting behind, the despairingly few torches that hung to the walls, and the many stone bricks that formed said hall and stretched on either side to a pair of black abysses. She turned back and stood up, ambling to the very small room beyond on warbling thin legs that could barely support her weight. She caught sight of a lone bed to one side, a toilet on the other, and a few empty inches beyond those items that gave way to an imposing wall without light nor a window.

Anna sauntered to the wall, shambled to the nearest corner, and sat down again. Her legs ached, her lungs burned as she let go of the breath that she didn't realize she was holding, and the rest of her body gave a weak shudder. "No point in trying, huh…" she mused in a hoarse voice, slowly turning to the opened door that led to the hall outside. It was almost taunting her. "Then why leave that open… is this a sick prank?"

She turned to the door itself, seeing nothing more than a great metal slab on hinges. No handle, no sliding mechanism, not even bolts dotted its frame. Her eyes almost gleamed, but a throb of pain from her legs reminded her that they weren't up to the task. A kick came from her stomach and pushed outward slightly, seemingly in agreement. Her cheek gave one last sting just to cement it in, accentuated by a chill as the blood that leaked out started to dry.

Anna sighed dejectedly and turned to her engorged stomach just in time to see a little bump jut out as she felt another kick. She leveled a glare at her own abdomen, as if it had done something wrong. "You're not helping," she snorted derisively, venom almost oozing from her voice as she spoke.

She felt another kick. Apparently, her unborn child decided to ladle on the torment. "I hope you die before entering this wretched world," she balefully spat, eyes narrowing into slits. She flinched with a strangled gasp as another kick was sent right into her left kidney, making another dose of agony flare through her nerves with the force of white fire. Anna doubled over, gritting her teeth as the kicking picked up the pace and started hammering away, with each and every second only causing further anguish.

She yelped as she felt a tiny foot _puncture_ something within. It felt as though a blade sliced clean through her stomach and came out the other side. Her stomach started rapidly filling up with a warm liquid as another tiny foot tore another hole through her body in a place close to her liver. Anna leaned forward in an attempt to stand, but only managed to tumble and stop on her hands and knees.

Her eyes went wide, and her pupils shrank as she felt her stomach _stretching_ from her sides. Tears built in her eyes as a tiny hand punched through the uterine wall and through the flesh with ease, and she screamed as it pushed its way out with an unholy force of will. She turned and screamed again as small fingers grasped part of an opened hole that was rapidly growing across her abdomen. A liquid rushed up from her stomach, through her throat, and pooled in her mouth before she could scream a third time.

The heavy taste of iron was on her tongue, highlighted by a hint of acid. Another hand joined the first and parted her stomach's walls with ease. A bloodied infant tumbled out, followed by shredded vital organs that painted the floor beneath her in copious amounts of deep red. The baby tumbled out of her tunic and rested between her legs, and only then did Anna collapse in her own guts.

Parts of her body were already going numb, but it was then that Anna twisted to lay on her back before forcing herself to sit up. She leaned for the child and grabbed its neck with her hands, and with one single jerk she snapped its neck before falling down again. Both mother and child were unmoving then, and blood continued to pool around them.

The world started to go black, and there was nothing Anna could do to stop it. Her body began to turn cold. Her arms and legs were no longer responsive. Blood trickled from her mouth, and she gave one last hiss of pain before the darkness overtook her entirely.

Yet she could hear a voice calling out to her, even as death itself claimed her. What the voice said, though, eluded her in her last fleeting moment of consciousness. As she breathed her last, gurgled breath, her eyes slipped shut, but not before she caught sight of a faint flash of purple.


	2. I- Lightless Void

Anna laid very still in her darkened world, with muddled thoughts going through her head at such a turnover rate she didn't have the urge nor care to process them. Which was about as good as it was going to get, though; she was certain she'd entered purgatory at the very least by now, and she had a lot of time on her bloodstained hands before her inevitable judgement came to cast her off right into Hell's fiery pits.

Her body had gone completely stiff with rigor mortis at this point anyway. There was no point in trying to get up. And even if she could, theoretically, then how would she sit up after having been gutted like a fish? She wouldn't have been the least bit surprised if she'd found her infant terror had somehow broken her spine in the process.

An uncounted amount of time had passed, and nothing had changed except for the fleeting, ever-changing thoughts going through her mind. But the thoughts ground to an abrupt halt when she felt distinctly _warm_ limbs grasping at… an intestine? Or was it her liver? She wanted to open her eyes at that point, but could not even manage a very slight twitch. It took her a great deal of effort just to lift an index finger, and she gave a raspy groan upon hearing the sound of bones popping and cracking.

 _"Be still, my child,"_ a hissing voice echoed into her head, distinctly feminine yet almost demonic just the same. _"Soon, you shall awaken once again."_ With that, she felt… a kidney or something like it get pulled towards what was presumably _away_ from her corpse that was probably decaying back on the mortal plane.

Her mind caught up with the fact that her finger _moved._ Anna gave another weak, protesting groan, but it hitched in her throat about halfway. Whatever was toying about with what she guessed were her innards softly chided her, _"Patience, young ranger. Soon you shall have any queries you may possess answered to."_

Anna could only wait for whenever this 'soon' would come, because her mind began racing with the starting throes of a panic attack. _"Aren't I dead?! H-how am I s-still moving?! Wh-who is that t-talking to me ohnonononononono…"_

Then, before she'd realized it had happened, her eyes finally snapped open. The first thing she noticed was that the act of parting her lids did next to nothing to break the darkness surrounding her. But parts of that darkness—moving parts at that—seemed just a tinge more black. When she opened her mouth to ask what the hell was going on, it closed when she felt flesh getting punctured once more, although this time by something decidedly smaller and thinner than an infant's finger.

 _"It seems someone's impatient… but then again, it isn't too often one becomes something else entirely,"_ the voice mused with a chuckle that was so chilling Anna could've sworn her bones rattled briefly. Anna could not process the statement before red overtook her vision with a vengeance, and closed her eyes as it then turned from red to stark white. But even that did little to cease the feeling of organs shifting unnaturally, or flesh being punctured again.

After a long moment that seemed to stretch forever, it ended, and with it the numbness returned. _"Open your eyes. See into your world… as you are now,"_ the voice beckoned. Slowly, Anna did just that, noticing that she once more awoke in her cell, on her back as she was before. She wondered if, perhaps, she had dreamed up the child tearing her stomach asunder, before her gaze trailed down to the spot between her legs.

The child, its neck twisted at a horrible angle, was still there. Its hands were still stained in blood, but now… its skin had gone a dull shade of grey. Flies swarmed it, and she could see a maggot or two feasting on its flesh. Haltingly at first, she sat up, pain flaring through her nerves with a renewed vigor. Blood still coated her body, yes, but as Anna's gaze trailed lower, she found a flat stomach and no organs to be seen.

Only then did she register that there was no light at all, and yet… _something_ gave off a faint red glow she could see by. Befuddled, she glanced around, trying to detect the source of the glow. Yet nothing even gave her so much as a clue as to what produced it, though when her eyes fell onto the door, she noticed it was still open. A hooded figure was also present, robes stained and tattered, face-down on the floor with a talon outstretched towards her. As with the child, maggots crawled onto it to feast on its flesh.

Anna slowly stood up, causing the remnants of her tunic to fall from her despairingly lithe, gaunt body in doing so. With shaky steps, each one striking hot steel upon aching nerves, she ambled to the larger body before kneeling and turning it over to see what may have slain it. Her head tilted when doing that revealed little more than the robes being torn open, and a body in a similar state like hers riddled with a distinct case of a horrific disembowelment. In fact, everything from the lungs right down to the reproductive bits had been removed, leaving nary a scrap of evidence that they were even there to begin with. Stranger still, the wound was free of blood, and the vacant cavity was carved so neatly the edges of it were not tattered save where the maggots had begun to chew.

Anna turned to the hallway and stood up again, pausing for a moment to consider what was going on. _"Dead baby, dead robed guy, no light, and somehow I'm walking again..."_ she thought, brow furrowing at that last one especially. _"I could've sworn my womb was the first thing to go..."_ Her stomach gave an irritated cramp at that thought, as though asking her to please never remind it of that fiasco ever again. _"That settles it, I'm in the first gauntlet of Hell already."_

With her rationalization for why she was once more walking kept firmly clasped by her mind, she set out into the dim hall and almost immediately paused as soon as she got out of the cell when she realized she had no idea where to go from here. Part of her argued that, since she was in Hell, it didn't matter where she went from here, especially since the only thing waiting for her was more torture regardless of whether she went left or right. The more skeptical part of her countered that, if she didn't start walking _now,_ then she'd _never_ find a way out of this dismal place.

Eventually, with however long it took completely lost to her, Anna's inner skeptic won that debate and she turned right to start walking. Her legs shaky and protesting with nerves on fire, she swallowed a groan of discomfort and began ambling in that direction, figuring that fatigue would not be any worse in the long run than being gutted from within.

The only thing that filled in that darkened void was an unsettling silence, which not even her shuffling feet could hope to break. Anna held her breath, idly wondering if she had forgotten how to release it… or simply no longer had a need to breathe now that she was in Hell.

The hall seemed to stretch on forever, its expanse unyielding, its length unending, its darkness ever-consuming. Her slow gait did little to even make a dent in the distance; she did not even gain a foot from the cell she awoke in before something else gave her pause.

She heard that voice again. _"Keep going, my child…"_ it said to her, echoing all around as though it were the darkness itself. _"Keep going…"_


	3. II- Lux Tenebras

Anna ambled onward, only pausing to rest when her legs' nerves cried out in so great a pain it caused them to lock up of their own accord. The hall stretched for several miles at least, and no other doors were in sight; nothing but stone bricks, snuffed torches, and permeating darkness all around her, in fact. She never sat down once, however, even when her body gave up and demanded rest that she did not deny it. The stone was cold, deathly so, and she needed desperately to keep what scant warmth her body made within, for crying out loud.

The farther she went, though, the more it felt as if the skin were peeling off of her feet. She wouldn't have been surprised if that were honestly the case, though she pushed the thought aside in order to focus on more pressing matters. The voice's owner promised her answers, though as the hall kept stretching on in an effort to keep her from getting them, she was starting to get a little irritable. The lapses were small at first, a kick at the floor here, an ineffective punch to the wall there, and a moment where she'd tried to pull her hair out of her head as the frustration started to grow.

No matter how much her inner skeptic started to complain about how these lapses of anger were getting her nowhere, Anna persisted with them for some time, though she made sure never to hit the walls and floor hard enough to snap her fingers and toes. She kept pressing on, gaunt legs slowing down no matter what she did, and slowly but surely time lost its meaning here. The cherry on top of this sundae was that bruises started building on her feet and hands after the first few bouts of anger. Bruises, she noted, that had oddly turned black as pitch within mere seconds of actually receiving them.

She dismissed the bruises as a simple case of necrosis finally deciding to start eating away at her body, exacerbated by the little episodes she had here and there. Perhaps this particular stretch of Hell decided it was being far too lenient on her, but kept up that leniency just to agitate her some more. Whatever the reason, she marched on, determined to find out where the owner of the voice was, and more importantly, who the owner was.

They promised her answers, damnit. She was going to get them even if her flesh peeled from her bones. With a grumble consisting of small expletives, each more colorful than the last, she continued onward and—her face met with a wooden frame that wasn't there before. Anna froze against the frame for a few seconds, before pawing around it with her hands to figure out what it was and what it was doing here.

Okay, splintery, rough to the touch… aaaaaaaand a few cuts now dotted her fingers. Fantastic. Metal trimming, if it could be called that, just as rough but rusting away… a circular object clinging close to the middle…

Bingo.

Anna grinned and clasped the circular object with both hands, feeling it up and down to confirm what it was. Slender, just thick enough to wrap her whole hands around it… anchored to a metal square.

She raised it up as high as it could go and pulled. The door, whether due to its decrepit state or owing to her pitiful strength, did not budge so much as an inch. She tried digging her feet into the stone floor, but ended up slipping and yelping as one of her ankles twisted without a pop but with a fresh flare-up of pain.

She straightened her foot with a grumble. "Friggin sprains… always coming at the worst possible time…" she hissed in irritation. She kicked at the door with her good foot—and promptly twisted _that_ one too, though thankfully without any more broken bones. At this, she gave a scream of anguish and dismay before throwing herself onto the door in her newest fit of rage. Irony chose its moment to strike; when she did this, the door slammed wide open and she tumbled face first into the floor. She looked up with a wordless snarl, finding—light!

Great blinding light at that! It was so white, she could've sworn she suddenly saw white dancing clouds for a second! Anna winced and narrowed her eyes to slits to let them adjust accordingly, half-tempted to rub them in case Hell started screwing around with her. As her vision adjusted and the light dimmed, she sighed in disappointment upon finding a hole in a circular ceiling letting the abnormally bright sunshine filter through.

Though, at least it revealed the rest of the dome-shaped room with a clarity the darkness lacked. On the floor was a bloodstained runic circle, once aglow with magics but now dim and forgotten. Snuffed out wax pools she could only barely call candles littered the scene, as did more robed figures sporting suspiciously empty chest cavities. Beyond the grisly scene stood a pair of double doors with a mirror built into their frames, having collected so much dust it simply could not reflect a thing.

She stood up with a wince and force of will before walking to that dusty mirror—perhaps it could have given her half an idea of what was going on. She trudged slowly, ankles protesting in a threat to break if she abused them ever again. She carefully walked around the wax puddles and corpses, ignoring the runic circle that was currently in disuse—she didn't know what it did, but was silently thankful it wasn't active—before approaching the mirror.

Strange… she could see faint traces of red in the dust as she got closer. Perhaps it had soaked up some blood? Given the massacre all around her, that hunch was plausible, but she wouldn't know for certain if she didn't do some digging. Carefully, she swiped her hand across the dust, and that was when she noticed it—her skin was frightfully reddish-brown, almost a rotting ashen in color.

Anna shook her head and blinked. Alas, to her dismay, she found she wasn't just seeing things. With careful movements fueled by renewed vigor, she wiped away as much dust as her hands could, slowly unravelling a disturbing reality before her very eyes. It wasn't just her hand that was that sickly color; her whole body practically wallowed in it! Stitches thin and long ran the gamut of her stomach, with a few smaller ones adorning her collarbone and left cheek for good measure. Her green hair hadn't been spared either; it was now a red so deep that the blood of her own viscera would have been envious.

Worst of all, however, black eyes stared back at her. Framed within were twin glowing orbs of deepest crimson. Anna took a step back, hands flying to her mouth—the figure looking at her doing likewise. A horrified gasp left her mouth as her eyes went wide, blazing orbs shrinking at her own terrified reflection. "I-I-I'm…" was all she could stammer out before collapsing from exertion and agony. She scooted back, hoping to get away from the reflection, but her legs just simply gave out before she could make it even a foot backwards.

Her mind started itself in another tizzy, spinning a mile a minute. W-was… this one of the answers her mysterious benefactor had promised her, or was this Hell itself casting an illusion upon her fracturing mental state? And if it wasn't either of those things, or worse yet both…

… then _what_ was going on here?!


End file.
